Awhile back, we did a post on traveling by air with two under two. For those of you who are getting ready to take your show on the road for the holidays, we thought we'd provide our tops tips for traveling by car as well. With family scattered all over the country, I've dragged my Bunch all over the place by both air and car. Believe it or not, I have come to the conclusion that if our destination is anything 10 hours or less of actually driving time (subtract peepee, eating, and hotel stops), it's actually easier to drive than fly. Note I did not say EASY, just easier. Here are my top five trips for traveling by car:
- Get a portable DVD player.
- Get a portable DVD player.
- Seriously, did you get that portable DVD player yet?
- Install/connect the portable DVD player before you leave the driveway.
- Don't forget to pack the DVD's.
And honestly, I am not normally a huge TV person. My kids are limited to 1 hour, if that, per day and some days they don't watch anything at all. But they make up for it on long car trips, bringing their annual daily average to 1 hour per day.
I do have a few other tips as well:
- Pack lots of healthy snacks and a cooler of drinks. This is key. Recently I've come to the conclusion that most restaurants featuring drive-thru's are not only bad for your body, but taste sickening. After three straight meals at McDonald's in a row, you will be craving something with nutritional value. Before you leave, pack a snack bag with healthy foods such as PB&J sandwiches, fruit, pretzels, animal crackers, granola/breakfast bars, etc. Throw some waters and maybe a few juice boxes in the cooler, along with some yogurts and a few cheese sticks. This way you won't have to make a million stops for food, which is both expensive and time consuming. Have snacks on hand as well as something a little heavier that can pass as a light meal for your child in case you happen to be in the middle of nowhere when your little ones are ready for a meal.
- Stop frequently. Yeah, yeah, I know this is annoying - especially to guys, who pride themselves on being able to drive coast to coast, stopping only long enough to fill up the gas tank. But it is a sanity saver for Baby Bunchers. So what if a 4 hour drive takes 7 hours? Your life is crazy whether you're at home, on the road, or at your in-laws for Thanksgiving, so what's your hurry about getting to the other end? Where to stop, you ask? Look for fast food restaurants with playgrounds if your kids are old enough. If not and the weather permits, look for little local parks/playgrounds where you can spread a blanket on the ground and let everyone stretch their legs. Even better if you can stop at a destination. We once took a 2 hour detour at DinoLand on a drive to Indiana, but darned if my kids didn't blaze through DinoLand and then sack out in the car for three hours afterwards. So we bought three hours of silence for only two hours of actual time!
- Plan your trip to avoid a hotel stop if you can. This is a tricky one and you really have to take into account your family's personality on this. One thing about babies is that they travel with tons and tons of crap. We found that we lost so much time stopping at hotels - by the time we unpacked and set up the PackNPlay, the suitcases, the toys, the snacks, etc. it was taking us half a day to get checked into/out of a hotel. It was costing us more time than it was worth. And don't even get me started on the fact that no one in my Bunch (including me) can sleep when we are all in the same room. If you do decide to go this route, at least pack one change of clothes for everyone in a small overnight bag so you don't have to unload every suitcase. We have many friends who address this problem by leaving after dinner or right before bedtime and drive straight through the night so their kids sleep for most of the trip. This never worked for us because we were exhausted on the other end and there wasn't ever any time to catch up on the missed sleep. So our solution (after trying both the hotel and driving through the night) is to leave at the crack of dawn and drive all day, getting to our destination late at night, but at least at a final destination. Yes, this involves listening to more whining because our kids were so cranked up they rarely went back to sleep when we carried them to the car half-awake in the morning, but at least we avoided some of the other problems mentioned above. Try it all three ways and you will learn what works best for you. And let us know if you have other methods that work...
- Pack a few small, noiseless toys with NOT a million pieces. This seems intuitive, but we just wanted to be sure you know. Books are great. Puzzles are not. Etch-A-Sketches are great. Anything that talks with an electronic voice is not. Pack a few CDs with children's music that you can stand. As a general rule, before you pack a toy, picture in your head how you are going to A) fit it in the car B) listen to it for 13 hours and C) keep up with it on the other end. Use this as your litmus test.
- Pack an emergency clean up kit. Someone will barf and someone will have a diaper blowout. At the very least, someone will spill their drink. Be sure you're prepared for all situations by packing a kit with paper towels, garbage bags, hand sanitizer, diapers/wipes/extra Pull Ups and training pants in sizes for all kids, and an easily accessible change of clothes for all family members, including yourself. Linda recommends keeping an extra potty in the trunk for just-in-case situations as well. Sometimes it's easier to pull over to pee than find a gas station, especially if your kids are prone to accidents.
- Don't forget pillows/blankets/loveys. At some point, everyone will get sick of whining and fall asleep. Anything you can do to facilitate a comfortable rest for a child who is sleeping sitting up with his head drooping forward is great.
Let us know if you've got other time-tested tricks. Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Trails!
Your emerergency kit should include easily accessible change of clothes (for everyone) so your husband isn't trying to dig clothes out of the suitcase in the carrier on top of the car while it is pouring down rain.
Posted by: Kari | Nov 25, 2008 at 11:15 AM
I didn't see anything here about a portable DVD player. Heheh.
Posted by: Casey | Nov 25, 2008 at 12:47 PM
-if your kids like snack variety, take a bunh of kinds of puffs, yogurt bites, etc and mix them all up and put them back in the plastic tubes that the gerber puffs come in. We also use the old puffs cans to easy take along animal crackers, cheese puffs, etc.
-I like to pack a big (or two) "extras" diaper bag with lots of diapers, a change of clothes, wipes, etc...and then a smaller bag with a few diapers, snacks, cups, etc in it that is all we need to take out when we stop. Just enough. Carrying all the extra crap you *might* need in and out of places gets old.
-we prefill the sippies and cups and bottles with the right amounts of water for watering down juice or making formula....that way they don't spoil, but they're good to go for the whole trip...then you can just dump in the formula or use small bottles of juice to fill the sippies.
-Combi makes rocking strollers for trips. They fold up VERY VERY nicely.
-ALSO...get thee some cargo bags! On our inlaws van and our Navigator, you can fit two tule cargo bags if need be. That way you don't have to have everything IN the car if you don't need it. We often travel with our two kids and my husband's parents, so we need all the room we can get.
-Cars with fold down seats are SO nice. Or partially folding back seats, so that you can get a kid or two in the last row and still fold one or two of the seats down for packing stuff.
-And yeah. DVD player. Rock on. :)
We go on a lot of vacations...and they're almost always 14 hour trips...can you tell? :)
Posted by: JessPond | Nov 25, 2008 at 02:48 PM
mine are 15 mo apart and currently just turned two (last week!) and about 8mo... we've done the long drive many times and my biggest suggestions would be
1. bring many many spare pacifiers if your kids take them. the last thing you want to do is stop every 20 minutes to hunt down the paci
and
2. bring several toys/books that they've either never seen before or haven't seen in a long time.
Posted by: MommyNamedApril | Nov 25, 2008 at 04:26 PM
For a long car trip with the newly potty trained, we bring along our own potty chair, wipes, a roll of paper towels, and a stash of plastic bags kept easily accessible in back.... sometimes it is a better option than a public restroom.
Posted by: MaryBeth @ FourSillySisters | Nov 25, 2008 at 08:06 PM
i recommend buying diapers once you get there, just brng enough in teh car to get you there, you can always buy more if you run out. we have a sedan that doesn't have much room in the trunk, so when we road trip it, we're always looking for ways to save space. one trip we took, i even bought a stroller at my destination b/c it was just cheaper and easier in the long run.
toys - we rear-face to the limits of the carseat, so i just took a bunch of those plastic links and attached 1 end to the hook behind the backseat, and attached toys to the other end. that way ds wasn't crying when he dropped his toys, he could grab them again himself. it was nice not to have to pull over every 10 minutes to fish a toy out of another seat.
Posted by: evelonies | Nov 26, 2008 at 09:49 AM
Ah yes a dvd player! A must!!
And yes I second the cargo bag for storing stuff on your roof.
Stopping at play areas is awesome to.
-beth (mom to W, Super N & Baby J (16.5 months and 20 months apart)
Great site!
Posted by: Beth | Nov 29, 2008 at 03:05 PM